Hamilton Hill

Visible for miles around, Hamilton Hill is a large oval mound which is gradually being engulfed by development and relief roads on the edge of the industrial town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Its relatively flat top has a slight ditch with a smaller circular mound situated within it, which has lead some observers to liken the whole feature to a breast with a nipple, particularly when viewed from the air.

Mansfield, named by England’s Anglo-Saxon settlers, may itself be indirectly titled after this breast-shaped feature. The town is named after the River Maun, which flows through it and has its source very close to Hamilton Hill. It’s thought that the Celtic word for breast, mam—which is a name given to many rounded hills throughout Britain and Ireland—may have inspired the River Maun’s earliest recoded name of “Aqua Mam” and Mansfield’s earliest recorded name of “Mammesfeld.” It’s reasonable to infer that Hamilton Hill may be the mam, or breast, which gave Mansfield and the Maun their names.

This is coal-mining country, so manmade mounds of earth are not uncommon. However, this mound is much older than its counterparts. It has mature trees growing on its steep sided banks. An ancient, possibly defensive hedge and ditch surround it. Pits and hollows, some containing fossilized seashells, have been discovered at its top, which is otherwise almost entirely flat.

It’s generally accepted by local historians and archaeologists alike that human activity has shaped the hill, but there is no common consensus as to when and why it was created. Speculations are that it is an Iron Age hill fort, a Neolithic “long barrow” burial chamber for individuals of importance, a grizzly vantage point for a hanging gallows, a motte (defensive hill for a fortress), a tribal or medieval regional meeting place, or a beacon station for long-distance signaling. Despite several archaeological investigations, the truth is still unclear.

Update as of June 2020: This is now private property.